2012 mazda miata Reviews and News

Sane little Mazda has quietly been producing one of the best sports cars of all time -- the Miata -- for more than two decades. Other than one bone-headed move to rename it (when some nitwit marketing exec decided to kill "Miata" in favor of "MX-5") and one half-hearted attempt to make it fast (the turbocharged Mazdaspeed MX-5 Miata), there has been no insanity. No Miata GT3. No Miata GT-RS. No Miata Superleggera. No Miata R.

The R-Spec from twenty years ago doesn't count. I'm talking full-on crazy. I want a Mazda Miata GT3 RSR. And it seems Mazda has already built one, and it's called the MX-5 Super20. It's perfect but for one big, glaring problem: they won't let me buy it.

Stupid, stupid, and more stupid. Why? Because it takes about 5.3 seconds behind the wheel to realize that this car simply must be built.

5.3 seconds is the amount of time that it takes for the MX-5 Super20 to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph. It's true, that's not very fast compared to really crazy cars like the Porsche 911 Turbo and the Lamborghini Gallardo Performante, but the Super20 is more nuts than either of them, because it's a half-baked tuner special that underscores what's wrong with modern cars. The Super20 isn't perfect, but that's exactly what makes it great. It's loud and rough around the edges. Mid-corner bumps cause its enormous tires to rub against its flared fenders, for example. The radio sometimes doesn't work. I don't care.

Basically, the Super20 is a Miata with a bunch of aftermarket go-fast goods. First and foremost, there's a Cosworth supercharger on the engine. What's the output? Mazda hasn't tested it and doesn't care. It's got a Racing Beat header and exhaust, big front and rear anti-roll bars, Mazdaspeed coil-over suspension, and some big wheels.

What it doesn't have is rationality. No committee within Mazda insisted that it had to be quieter or more fuel-efficient, or killed the project altogether because it doesn't meet Mazda's ride-quality standards or some other metric. This car is compromised, and that's what makes it great. For example, most cars that can accelerate to 60 mph in five seconds have long gears in their transmission, because loads of power means you can make the ratios numerically lower. Traction becomes less of an issue, and by redlining second gear at, say, 70 mph, you eliminate a shift on the 0-60 run and gain a couple of tenths. Or, worse, a carmaker will select a first gear that's long enough to get to 60 mph without a single shift, forcing us car magazines to do redline clutch dumps and get to 60 without a single shift. Such gearing also gets the carmaker a better EPA city rating. Yawn. Boring. This is why the old Dodge Viper was no more fun to drive than a school bus.

The Super20 is geared like a stock, slow Miata, which means you need two shifts to get to 60 mph. You're constantly involved. You're shifting like a maniac even when you're just keeping up with traffic. It's awesome. It gets even better when you're driving like a maniac. In fact, doing a 0-60 run is the busiest 5.3 seconds you can have behind the wheel of a modern car. Allow me to explain:

How to perform a 0-60 launch in a Mazda MX-5 Super20:

Step One: Find a flat section of road more than a mile away from the closest breathing mammal. This Miata's exhaust is so loud it's potentially lethal. Then disable the traction control.

Step Two: Bring the 2.0-liter to 3000 rpm and note how quickly it revs up. No big flywheels here, and certainly no turbo lag. Nice.

Step Four: Slam directly into the rev limiter because you weren't paying attention, and the Super20 makes its way through first gear in just 1.92 seconds, according to our VBOX. Abort and return to Step Two, and next time skip over this step -- but remember, it only takes 1.92 seconds from launch to redline!

Step Five: Shift as fast as you can into second gear. Thanks to the Miata's precise, short-throw shifter, you'll be back on the power in just 0.12 second.

Step Six: Ride the wave of supercharged torque through second gear -- you'll start at five grand after the shift, and then you must be prepared to shift again at 7200 rpm. If you hit the limiter again, that's because second gear is over and done with in only 1.99 seconds. Go back and do it again.

Step Seven: The Miata still has one of the best shifters in the business -- second to third is only another 0.12 second.

Step Eight: You're done. Well, not right away, but you're flying through the mile-a-minute marker a mere 1.19 seconds after you shifted into third gear.

Total time? 5.34 seconds. Yes, there are faster cars. A Bugatti Veyron Super Sport can do the same thing in only half the time. In that car, you press the gas pedal down and the driving experience ends there. That's not quite as involving.

Involvement is the whole point of a sports car. Mazda's aftermarket experiment keeps all of the involvement of a regular Miata, but cranks up the fun quotient by a factor of YEEEAAAHHH! Not one of the hundreds of cars I've driven in the last year was as fun as the Super20.

It's amazingly fun. It's crazy fun. It's a perfect antidote to today's politically correct, engineered-to-perfection rolling snoozemobiles. So much so that Mazda, the company that says Zoom Zoom on its minivan ads, is stupid for not building it.

The Miata is best enjoyed with a manual transmission bolted to its 2.0-liter four-cylinder. The engine produces only 167 hp and redlines at 7200 rpm, but it's the way the power is delivered that makes the Miata so much fun: the sixteen-valver pulls hard all the way to its 7500-rpm fuel cutoff, with great induction noise piped directly into the cabin. The optional automatic transmission doesn't kill the fun too severely, but it does drop power to 158 hp and reduces the redline to a more pedestrian 6700 rpm. The Miata offers a well-designed cabin made of high-quality materials, a usable--although not exactly spacious--trunk, and a soft top that you can flip up or down without getting out of the driver's seat. In addition, an optional power retractable hard top that can be raised or lowered in twelve seconds makes the Miata a livable companion in foul-weather states. The Miata is a lot of fun to drive, despite the fact that its engine puts out a relatively modest amount of power. All-around independent suspension, disc brakes, and a finely tuned chassis further contribute to a pure and exhilarating driving experience. With the disappearance this year of the more hard-core RX-8, the Miata carries on as the only sports car in the Mazda lineup. We expect an all-new Miata next year. Would that stop us from buying a 2012? Most definitely not.

Racers rejoice! Mazda confirmed that the hardcore MX-5 GT4 racer will enter limited production, according to a new report. The downside? It’ll cost you over $195,000, and appears to be restricted to teams competing in the British GT series.

Martin Wilson built the first Monster Miata for a customer who wanted a Mustang 5.0-liter V-8 installed in his Miata. In this Feature Flick, Wilson shares how this project became his primary business and what he has in store for the future Monster Miatas.

I must have racked up some serious good karma last week, because when I left work on Friday I discovered beautiful blue skies, 70-degree weather, and the keys to a Mazda MX-5. It felt like the perfect day to lower the car's power hardtop and take the long way home, so I unwound from the work week by winding around the back roads of Ann Arbor.

2012 Mazda MX-5 Miata Special Edition PRHT

Mazda has revealed the latest update for its MX-5 Miata roadster, which goes on sale today in Japan. The Japanese-market car will score a new front fascia design, a new pedestrian safety feature, and some minor mechanical upgrades.

The current NC-generation Mazda MX-5 Miata has been on sale since 2005 and will continue on for a few more years before an all-new fourth-gen car makes an appearance. But worry not, Mazda isn't letting its fun-to-drive roadster languish: the Miata will be getting a facelift for 2013.

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